The Gorilla Repertory Theater Company, also known as Gorilla Rep, is an environmental theater company based out of New York City. Best known for its perennial production of A Midsummer Night's Dream , [1] Gorilla Rep brings brings plays to parks all over New York City. The company was founded in 1989 by artistic director Christopher Carter Sanderson.
Gorilla Rep's repertoire consists primarily of the works of William Shakespeare and other classics, with occasional works by modern playwrights. [2] Most of Gorilla Rep's productions are performed outdoors, in various parks in New York City, with local environmental features worked into the staging of the show. [3] From scene to scene, both actors and audience change location, with the actors running to the next setting and the audience following behind. [4]
Hamlet is a 1990 drama film based on the Shakespearean tragedy of the same name, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson as the eponymous character. The film also features Glenn Close, Alan Bates, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Dillane, and Nathaniel Parker. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy, the film was the first produced by Icon Productions, a company co-founded by Gibson.
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody, and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Chorus Line. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District.
The Cherry Orchard is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in 1903, it was first published by Znaniye, and came out as a separate edition later that year in Saint Petersburg, via A.F. Marks Publishers. On 17 January 1904, it opened at the Moscow Art Theatre in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov described the play as a comedy, with some elements of farce, though Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. Since its first production, directors have contended with its dual nature. It is often identified as one of the three or four outstanding plays by Chekhov, along with The Seagull, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya.
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, D.C. The theatre company focuses primarily on plays from the Shakespeare canon, but its seasons include works by other classic playwrights such as Euripides, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Schiller, Coward and Tennessee Williams. The company manages and performs in two spaces: The Michael R. Klein Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall. In cooperation with George Washington University, they run the STC Academy.
Chay Yew is a playwright and stage director who was born in Singapore. He was artistic director of the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago from 2011 to 2020.
Margaret Webster was an American-British theater actress, producer and director. Critic George Jean Nathan described her as "the best director of the plays of Shakespeare that we have."
Irene Worth, CBE, born Harriett Elizabeth Abrams, was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the British and American theatre. She pronounced her first name with three syllables: "I-REE-nee".
The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep, is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for producing avant-garde plays by contemporary writers. The company, described as a "cultural pillar", is currently located in a 65-seat theatre in the TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. The company, and the projects it has produced, have won multiple prizes and earned critical acclaim, including numerous Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. A recent highlight was winning the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement for "nearly four decades of artistic distinction, innovative production, and provocative play selection."
Emily Betsy Mann is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020.
Laila Robins is an American stage, film and television actress. She has appeared in films including Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), An Innocent Man (1989), Live Nude Girls (1995), True Crime (1999), She's Lost Control (2014), Eye in the Sky (2015), and A Call to Spy (2019). Her television credits include regular roles on Gabriel's Fire, Homeland, and Murder in the First, playing Pamela Milton in the final season of The Walking Dead (2022), and Colonel Grace Mallory in The Boys (2019–2024) and Gen V (2023).
The Voodoo Macbeth is a common nickname for the Federal Theatre Project's 1936 New York production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Orson Welles adapted and directed the production, moved the play's setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean island, recruited an entirely Black cast, and earned the nickname for his production from the Haitian vodou that fulfilled the role of Scottish witchcraft. A box office sensation, the production is regarded as a landmark theatrical event for several reasons: its innovative interpretation of the play, its success in promoting African-American theatre, and its role in securing the reputation of its 20-year-old director.
Georgia Shakespeare was a professional, not-for-profit theatre company located in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States on the campus of Oglethorpe University from 1985-2014. Georgia Shakespeare produced three plays annually, primarily between June and November. Twelve educational programs were developed in the history of Georgia Shakespeare. These programs included "The High School Tour", a "High School Acting Competition", "Camp Shakespeare", a "High School Conservatory", a "No Fear Shakespeare" training program for educators, after school residencies, school tours, student matinees, classes for professionals, and in-school workshops. At its peak, it welcomed 60,000 patrons annually to its performances.
Oak Park Festival Theatre (OPFT) is a professional theatre company in Oak Park, Illinois, under contract with Actors' Equity Association. The company was founded in 1975 by Marion Kaczmar, an Oak Park resident and arts patron, and performed Renaissance works, almost exclusively by William Shakespeare, until 2004, when it broadened its scope to classics of other eras. Its outdoor venue has been Austin Gardens, a wooded park near downtown Oak Park within walking distance from restaurants, Frank Lloyd Wright landmarks, and Metra and CTA trains. To attract a greater following, Renaissance, classical, and modern American works were added to the offerings, some being produced indoors in historic Farson-Mills Home and, in the 2010-11 season, in the studio space in the Madison Street Theatre.
Curt Columbus became Trinity Repertory Company’s fifth artistic director in January 2006. He is also the artistic director of the Brown/Trinity MFA programs in Acting and Directing. His directing credits for Trinity include Macbeth, Ragtime,Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, Middletown, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Merchant of Venice, His Girl Friday, Camelot, Cabaret, Blithe Spirit, A Christmas Carol, Cherry Orchard and the world premieres of Stephen Thorne's The Completely Fictional, Utterly True, Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe and Jackie Sibblies Drury's Social Creatures. Trinity has been home to the world premieres of three of his plays, Paris by Night, The Dreams of Antigone, and Sparrow Grass. Trinity has also produced his translations of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard and Ivanov, as well as Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear and Lope de Vega’s Like Sheep to Water .
Sleep No More is the New York City production of an immersive theatre work created by the British theatre company Punchdrunk. It is primarily based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, with inspiration also taken from noir films, as well as some reference to the 1697 Paisley witch trials. It builds on their original 2003 London incarnation and their Brookline, Massachusetts, 2009 collaboration with Boston's American Repertory Theatre. The company reinvented Sleep No More as a co-production with Emursive, beginning performances on March 7, 2011. Sleep No More won the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and won Punchdrunk special citations at the 2011 Obie Awards for design and choreography.
Feodor Chin is an American actor, writer, and comedian from San Francisco, California. As an actor, he was classically trained at UCLA, the American Conservatory Theater, and has studied with renowned acting coach, Larry Moss. He was a Maude Night performer at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre for three seasons. TV credits include Big Little Lies, Good Trouble, American Auto, Pam & Tommy, Medical Police, Lethal Weapon, Jane the Virgin, The Affair, Speechless, and New Girl. Animation credits include the title role in Netflix's Uncle from Another World, Futurama, Marvel's Hit-Monkey and What If...?, and Cartoon Network's Regular Show. He is the voice of Zenyatta and Lee Sin in the hit video games, Overwatch / Overwatch 2 and League of Legends. He was a performer for the ABC Discovers Talent Showcase and a writer for the CBS Diversity Comedy Showcase.
Meno Fortas is a theatrical production facility and theater group in Vilnius formed and directed by Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrošius since 1998. It was specifically created for the production of works under this director, but is also active in the formation of young theater arts professionals and the promotion of Lithuanian theatre tradition both at home and abroad. The institution does not have its own theater and performs heavily abroad at theatre festivals. The institution is known for its streamlined stagings, heavy on metaphor, with most of its stories based on known plays, including major works by Shakespeare, Anton Chekov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. These productions are an extension of Nekrošius's directing career which began in the 1970s.
The Mirror Theater was founded by Sabra Jones in 1983, who was also the Founding Artistic Director. The first program of the theater was the Mirror Repertory Company (MRC). Founding members of the company included Eva Le Gallienne, John Strasberg, and Geraldine Page. Sabra Jones reached out to Ellis Rabb, artistic director of the APA Phoenix Repertory Company, John Houseman of the Mercury Theater, and Eva Le Gallienne of the Civic Repertory Theatre Company. The company was intended to be "an alternating repertory company in the classic sense" of actor-manager leadership, which Rabb, Houseman, and La Gallienne pioneered. Alternating repertory refers to when one company performs a variety of plays in the same season with the same actors, which was formerly a mainstay of theater tradition. This system has been attributed with helping actors grow in their craft through a wide variety of roles. MRC was funded in its inception primarily by philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller, with additional donations from philanthropists and actors such as Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and others.
Jeffrey Omura is an American actor, politician, and labour organizer.
Lynn Favin is an American actress. She is known for her roles on The Get Down, Veep, Famous in Love, The Show Must Go Online, and for voicing seventeen characters on the animated series Robot Chicken on Adult Swim. She is a regular actress with the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and currently resides in New York City.